Early in life, Gary Baker lived through what he describes as a crazy childhood that he wouldn’t trade for anything. “It provided me with the ability to become resilient, persistent, authentic and most importantly, empathetic,” said Baker. These early experiences led Baker to want to pursue becoming a psychologist but at the same time, he would review the markets every weekend with his grandfather sparking an introduction to a financial advisor.
“This advisor shared with me that some days he feels like he is a psychologist,” said Baker. “At that point, I knew I could merge my two greatest interests – helping people and investing.” After pursuing a degree in personal finance, he began working in the industry, but after 10 years, he decided he wanted to work for a firm that puts clients in the center while lifting them up to become whoever they are supposed to be.
That was the idea and inspiration behind Undivided, which Baker launched in 2018. The mission of Undivided is to transform lives well beyond money. As expert solution providers in the financial services industry, Undivided has a unique planning approach to build investment plans, financial plans and life plans for its clients.
As the CEO and president, Baker said he is a framework thinker which has led to creating many frameworks for solving problems for his clients. “Our three-part planning process (investment planning, financial planning and life planning) through a life stage approach with access to our Insight Platform and Experience center has become a wakeup call to our industry,” he said.
The simplest framework, according to Baker, is the Expand and Contract Framework where the assumption is that the problem is in the center. “First, we take the problem and make it seem relatively small and then we divide it by 10 to gain our starting point,” he said. “We then look to the past to see how we got to this problem and create the desired outcome. Somewhere in that exercise, one will discover the root cause, the simple solution, the starting point and the desired outcome.”
Despite industry success, Baker said his greatest accomplishments aren’t quantitative. “My greatest accomplishments are my relationships and that I get to see, watch and be a part of the amazing things they do with their lives and the impact they have on the lives of others,” he said. “The accomplishments that mean the most will always be qualitative vs quantitative, and those accomplishments are hard to measure or summarize – but they are what provides me with the most joy in life.”
For positively impacting his partnerships and the industry, Baker has been named a titan.
